Houston female-focused health tech accelerator names top companies at annual event

you go girls

Sarah Lee, CEO and co-founder of Relavo, won first place at the 2024 Ignite Health Fire Pitch Competition. Photo via Ignite/LinkedIn

A Houston organization that accelerates and supports female founders leading innovative health tech startups has concluded its 2024 program with the announcement of this year's top companies.

Ignite Health, an accelerator founded in 2017 by longtime Houston health care professional Ayse McCracken, named its 2024 winners at its annual Fire Pitch Competition in Houston last month. The companies pitched health tech solutions across lung health, renal therapy, breastfeeding tech, and more.

"This year’s competition was a culmination of passion, innovation, and hard work from the top startups in our 2024 Accelerator Program," reads a LinkedIn post from Ignite. "These trailblazing founders earned their spot on the stage by demonstrating exceptional leadership and the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry with their solutions and devices."

First place winner was Sarah Lee, CEO and co-founder of Relavo, a New York-based company that's making home dialysis more effective, safer, and more affordable. Lee accepted awards from Johnson & Johnson and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Therese Canares, CEO and founder of CurieDx, took second place and won its awards from SWPDC - Southwest National Pediatric Device Innovation Consortium and Wilson Sonsini. CurieDx, based in Baltimore, Maryland, is creating remote diagnostic tools using smartphone technology.

In third place is Andrea Ippolito, CEO and founder of SimpliFed, a company focused on democratizing access to baby feeding and breastfeeding services through virtual care that's covered by insurance. The startup won awards from Texas Children's Hospital and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Three other finalists won other awards, including:

  • Kadambari Beelwar, CEO and co-founder, Henderson, Nevada-based Truss Health, which created an AI-powered sensor fusion platform that's designed to detect early signs of infection, won an award presented by Memorial Hermann Health System and Golden Seeds
  • Mimi Gendreau Kigawa, CEO and co-founder of New York-based Zeph Technologies, an AI-lung care company with technology for clinicians to deliver pulmonary care to patients with chronic respiratory disease, won an award presented by CU Innovations and Houston Methodist
  • Ashley Yesayan, CEO and co-founder, New York-based OneVillage, a software platform meant to support patients and family members through trying health events, won an award presented by CU Innovations

The companies were evaluated by the 2024 judges, which included: Allison Rhines, head of JLABS Houston; Andrew Truscott, global health technology lead at Accenture; Angela Shippy, senior physician executive at Amazon Web Services; Kimberly Muller, executive director of CU Innovations at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Myra Davis, chief innovation and information officer at Texas Children's Hospital; and Winjie Tang Miao, senior executive vice president and COO of Texas Health Resources.

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From health care to politics, here's who you need to know in Houston innovation this week. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

Who's who

There's no summer slowdown in sight, as Houston's innovation world keeps turning. Texas Children's Hospital is amping up their attention to innovation — and so is the mayor. Meanwhile, a local software company just made a big hire. Here's what innovators you need to keep an eye on.

Myra Davis, senior vice president and chief information and innovation officer of Texas Children's Hospital

Myra Davis is responsible for Texas Children's Hospital's technology and innovation — two completely separate things, she says. Courtesy of TCH

Myra Davis wants you to realize that there's a difference between technology and innovation. As the chief information officer, she's been in charge of maintaining tech within the hospital system. However, her role has evolved to include innovation, which means thinking about what new elements TCH can bring in — or what existing elements can be improved or expanded. Read more about Davis and what TCH is up to.

Talin Bingham, CTO of Identity Automation

Talin Bingham has been named CTO of Houston-based Identity Automation. Courtesy of Identity Automation

The chief technology officer is a huge role when it comes to a software company's hierarchy. Houston-based Identity Automation just tasked Talin Bingham with the position. Bingham replaces co-founder Troy Moreland as CTO, and Moreland will support the company in an advisory capacity. Last summer, the company made a major acquisition and sees plenty of opportunities for growth. Read more about the new hire.

Mayor Sylvester Turner

Mayor Sylvester Turner gave his State of the City address on May 20. Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

Mayor Sylvester Turner and his team are innovators themselves, constantly coming up with new ideas to enhance and connect the city. The city's latest endeavor was announced last week at the Greater Houston Partnership's State of the City luncheon. Mayor Turner's idea is to have 50 corporations sponsor 50 Houston-area parks scattered across the city for five years. Up next is finding 49 more companies, since Scott McClelland of HEB offered up his company on the spot. Read the 5 things the mayor promised in the address.

Myra Davis is responsible for Texas Children's Hospital's technology and innovation — two completely separate things, she says. Courtesy of TCH

Texas Children's exec to help transform the hospital's approach to innovation

Featured innovator

A few months ago, Myra Davis got a whole other slew of responsibilities with the addition of just one word to her title: Innovation. The senior vice president and chief information and innovation officer of Texas Children's Hospital oversees a team of individuals not only focused on bringing in new technologies and ideas — but maintaining those processes.

Currently, the hospital is in a transition phase looking to better represent its ongoing innovation, as well as bring in new aspects of innovation. Along with Paola Álvarez-Malo, assistant vice president of strategic and business planning at TCH, Davis is looking to keep TCH at the forefront of hospital innovation and pediatric care.

Davis sat down with InnovationMap to discuss the hospital's transformation process and how, while the work together, technoogy and innovation bring two different things to the table.

InnovationMap: What has been your initial focus since assuming the “innovation” part of your title a few months ago?

Myra Davis: When I was appointed, I stepped back and asked myself how we can go about doing this. I knew it was more than the need for technology. We needed to begin to leverage data and a resource that can be agnostic to the organization to help drive strategy.

IM: Why is being both the innovation officer and the information officer important?

MD: Typically, an innovation officer would pass off a new technology to the information officer and hope that they keep it up. Innovation is more than technology. It's about change, and advocating for change in practices, how we hire, how we look at outcomes, and how we look at data. Innovation is radical disruption of how we do things today. It's a full-time job, and then it backs up into including startups and new companies.

IM: Where are you in the transition process?

MD: We're in a discovery phase, which is almost complete. It will drive an outcome of what the structure should look like for an organization of our size and magnitude, and what additional resources we need to have. For example, today to make an appointment, you need to call and make an appointment at the front desk. But we should be disrupting that process and leverage technology. We should have goals of decreasing calls moving forward. We don't yet have the structure to bring those ideas to the table, but that's where I see it going.

IM: How have you seen innovation become a bigger player in health care?

MD: Health care is always a service organization. We're here to serve patients and help them get better. I think clinically, there's always been a need to stay innovative because it's medicine. Now, we're seeing the need to infuse the behaviors of innovative thinking and acting in our operating models to meet the health care model of service. What I mean by that is the cost of care. The models must change because reimbursements are changing, populations are changing, the demand of patients have changed. When I started, we never had patients not wanting to come in for care. Now, patients are saying they don't want to come in because it costs too much. While there's been a plethora of technologies — we have a host of technology systems — but we're realizing we've only scratched the surface with the opportunities we have.

I often talk about the little "i" versus the big "i" in the word "innovation." The little "i" is leveraging what you have already — that's an innovative game changer. Then there's the big "i" and that's the commercialization of a product or partnering with a startup company and they go public. When we say innovation, most people think of that big "i" but it's a spectrum.

IM: What’s the big technology you see disrupting the health care industry?

MD: I think it's data science. It's a major breakthrough. For prescriptive, predictive, and descriptive reasons, we can't afford to keep doing things ourselves. The market is getting competitive, and we must get to decision making faster. You got to go with the data. You can't be so precise it keeps you from being creative, but you have to start with knowledge.

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Portions of this interview have been edited.

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Autonomous truck company rolls out driverless Houston-Dallas route

up and running

Houston is helping drive the evolution of self-driving freight trucks.

In October, Aurora opened a more than 90,000-square-foot terminal at a Fallbrook Drive logistics hub in northwest Houston to support the launch of its first “lane” for driverless trucks—a Houston-to-Dallas route on the Interstate 45 corridor. Aurora opened its Dallas-area terminal in April and the company began regular driverless customer deliveries between the two Texas cities on April 27.

Close to half of all truck freight in Texas moves along I-45 between Houston and Dallas.

“Now, we are the first company to successfully and safely operate a commercial driverless trucking service on public roads. Riding in the back seat for our inaugural trip was an honor of a lifetime – the Aurora Driver performed perfectly and it’s a moment I’ll never forget,” Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Pittsburgh-based Aurora, said in a news release.

Aurora produces software that controls autonomous vehicles and is known for its flagship product, the Aurora Driver. The software is installed in Volvo and Paccar trucks, the latter of which includes brands like Kenworth and Peterbilt.

Aurora previously hauled more than 75 loads per week under the supervision of vehicle operators from Houston to Dallas and Fort Worth to El Paso for customers in its pilot project, including FedEx, Uber Freight and Werner. To date, it has completed over 1,200 miles without a driver.

The company launched its new Houston to Dallas route with customers Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines, which ran supervised commercial pilots with Aurora.

“Transforming an old school industry like trucking is never easy, but we can’t ignore the safety and efficiency benefits this technology can deliver. Autonomous trucks aren’t just going to help grow our business – they’re also going to give our drivers better lives by handling the lengthier and less desirable routes,” Richard Stocking, CEO of Hirschbach Motor Lines, added in the statement.

The company plans to expand its service to El Paso and Phoenix by the end of 2025.

“These new, autonomous semis on the I-45 corridor will efficiently move products, create jobs, and help make our roadways safer,” Gov. Greg Abbott added in the release. “Texas offers businesses the freedom to succeed, and the Aurora Driver will further spur economic growth and job creation in Texas. Together through innovation, we will build a stronger, more prosperous Texas for generations.”

In July, Aurora said it raised $820 million in capital to fuel its growth—growth that’s being accompanied by scrutiny.

In light of recent controversies surrounding self-driving vehicles, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose union members include over-the-road truckers, recently sent a letter to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calling for a ban on autonomous vehicles in Texas.

“The Teamsters believe that a human operator is needed in every vehicle—and that goes beyond partisan politics,” the letter states. “State legislators have a solemn duty in this matter to keep dangerous autonomous vehicles off our streets and keep Texans safe. Autonomous vehicles are not ready for prime time, and we urge you to act before someone in our community gets killed.”

Houston cell therapy company launches second-phase clinical trial

fighting cancer

A Houston cell therapy company has dosed its first patient in a Phase 2 clinical trial. March Biosciences is testing the efficacy of MB-105, a CD5-targeted CAR-T cell therapy for patients with relapsed or refractory CD5-positive T-cell lymphoma.

Last year, InnovationMap reported that March Biosciences had closed its series A with a $28.4 million raise. Now, the company, co-founded by Sarah Hein, Max Mamonkin and Malcolm Brenner, is ready to enroll a total of 46 patients in its study of people with difficult-to-treat cancer.

The trial will be conducted at cancer centers around the United States, but the first dose took place locally, at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Swaminathan P. Iyer, a professor in the department of lymphoma/myeloma at MD Anderson, is leading the trial.

“This represents a significant milestone in advancing MB-105 as a potential treatment option for patients with T-cell lymphoma who currently face extremely limited therapeutic choices,” Hein, who serves as CEO, says. “CAR-T therapies have revolutionized the treatment of B-cell lymphomas and leukemias but have not successfully addressed the rarer T-cell lymphomas and leukemias. We are optimistic that this larger trial will further validate MB-105's potential to address the critical unmet needs of these patients and look forward to reporting our first clinical readouts.”

The Phase 1 trial showed promise for MB-105 in terms of both safety and efficacy. That means that potentially concerning side effects, including neurological events and cytokine release above grade 3, were not observed. Those results were published last year, noting lasting remissions.

In January 2025, MB-105 won an orphan drug designation from the FDA. That results in seven years of market exclusivity if the drug is approved, as well as development incentives along the way.

The trial is enrolling its single-arm, two-stage study on ClinicalTrials.gov. For patients with stubborn blood cancers, the drug is providing new hope.

Elon Musk's SpaceX site officially becomes the city of Starbase, Texas

Starbase, Texas

The South Texas home of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company is now an official city with a galactic name: Starbase.

A vote Saturday, May 3, to formally organize Starbase as a city was approved by a lopsided margin among the small group of voters who live there and are mostly Musk’s employees at SpaceX. With all the votes in, the tally was 212 in favor to 6 against, according to results published online by the Cameron County Elections Department.

Musk celebrated in a post on his social platform, X, saying it is “now a real city!”

Starbase is the facility and launch site for the SpaceX rocket program that is under contract with the Department of Defense and NASA that hopes to send astronauts back to the moon and someday to Mars.

Musk first floated the idea of Starbase in 2021 and approval of the new city was all but certain. Of the 283 eligible voters in the area, most are believed to be Starbase workers.

The election victory was personal for Musk. The billionaire’s popularity has diminished since he became the chain-saw-wielding public face of President Donald Trump’s federal job and spending cuts, and profits at his Tesla car company have plummeted.

SpaceX has generally drawn widespread support from local officials for its jobs and investment in the area.

But the creation of an official company town has also drawn critics who worry it will expand Musk’s personal control over the area, with potential authority to close a popular beach and state park for launches.

Companion efforts to the city vote include bills in the state Legislature to shift that authority from the county to the new town’s mayor and city council.

All these measures come as SpaceX is asking federal authorities for permission to increase the number of South Texas launches from five to 25 a year.

The city at the southern tip of Texas near the Mexico border is only about 1.5 square miles (3.9 square kilometers), crisscrossed by a few roads and dappled with airstream trailers and modest midcentury homes.

SpaceX officials have said little about exactly why they want a company town and did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

“We need the ability to grow Starbase as a community,” Starbase General Manager Kathryn Lueders wrote to local officials in 2024 with the request to get the city issue on the ballot.

The letter said the company already manages roads and utilities, as well as “the provisions of schooling and medical care” for those living on the property.

SpaceX officials have told lawmakers that granting the city authority to close the beach would streamline launch operations. SpaceX rocket launches and engine tests, and even just moving certain equipment around the launch base, requires the closure of a local highway and access to Boca Chica State Park and Boca Chica Beach.

Critics say beach closure authority should stay with the county government, which represents a broader population that uses the beach and park. Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino, Jr. has said the county has worked well with SpaceX and there is no need for change.

Another proposed bill would make it a Class B misdemeanor with up to 180 days in jail if someone doesn’t comply with an order to evacuate the beach.

The South Texas Environmental Justice Network, which has organized protests against the city vote and the beach access issue, held another demonstration Saturday that attracted dozens of people.

Josette Hinojosa, whose young daughter was building a sandcastle nearby, said she was taking part to try to ensure continued access to a beach her family has enjoyed for generations.

With SpaceX, Hinojosa said, “Some days it’s closed, and some days you get turned away."

Organizer Christopher Basaldú, a member of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas tribe, said his ancestors have long been in the area, where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf.

“It’s not just important,” he said, “it’s sacred.”

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